Plasma Discharge in Liquid Phase Media under Ultrasonic Cavitation as a Technique for Synthesizing Gaseous Hydrogen

Abstract

It is shown that low-temperature plasma initiated in liquid-phase media in the discharge gap between electrodes can efficiently decompose hydrogen-containing molecules of organic compounds with the formation of gaseous products in which the hydrogen fraction is more than 90% (according to gas chromatography data). Preliminary estimations of the energy efficiency calculated taking into account the hydrogen and source material combustion heat and electric power expenditures showed the efficiency of the order of 60–70% depending on the source mixture composition. The discharge voltage and current were theoretically calculated in the process simulation whose data are in agreement with experimental results.